While objections have been raised by a few people (well, one person anyway) to these leading scientific groups inserting themselves into the climate debate, the rest of us should be glad they are counseling the world — especially their own countries — toward sanity. The statement is clear on what actions will be needed:

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16 Responses to National Academies call for 50% CO2 cut

Joe, what you fail to note is that Pielke Jr. is out in front criticizing mainly so that any journalist covering the National Academies statement will be certain to call him to “get the other side.” Basically, Pielke Jr’s body is nothing more than a breathing apparatus attached to an ego (coupled to a deep-seated boyhood insecurity driven by obvious father issues).

A prior strongly worded joint statement from the national science academies got essentially zero press coverage. I’m not as worried about the world’s scientists being balanced by Roger Pielke as I am about this one vanishing the same way other ones have,

How many of these Scientific organizations are there? Then how many have come out the same way as these? I know somebody is making a list of all these scientific organizations, maybe that should have some influence on delayer/deniers.

Maybe Brittany Spears or Lindsay Lohan or some others could be made honorary members of these Academies. It might get some press to come out and while they are there someone can mention this other thing, that global warming thing.

Is 50% a cut in emissions by 2050 enough? What will that leave the CO2 concentrations at?

On the one hand, we have Britain’s Royal Society calling for a 50% cut, on the other, the UL’s prime minister Gordon Brown throwing his rattle out of his playpen and demanding that the OPEC nations increase oil “production”.

Can we start calling oil “production” “oil consumption”, please, because that’s what these so-called “production” figures are measuring. (Oil is produced over many millions of years by slow geological processes, not by people digging holes in the ground).

Is 50% a cut in emissions by 2050 enough? What will that leave the CO2 concentrations at?

if it’s a straight line reduction, starting in a few years, with no growth in natural emissions, ha ha, maybe no less than 460ppm? but of course they’re not proposing an unchanging plan; they want a commitment.

These academies, and countless other ones devoted to specific scientific discplines, have repeatedly issued similar statements. They reflect the collective scientific research of tens of thousdands of scientists. Yes, when I repeatedly bring these facts up to climate change deniers, all I hear is “They’re a biased group because they don’t reflect the views of Dr. so-and-so.” I’d rather see these academies issue point-by-point refutations of the Dr. so-and-so’s out there. Because these statements are ignored in the media.

Re: 50% reduction being enough — no, not at all. Woefully inadequate. While I’m glad to see that they call for immediate action, their 2050 goal is nothing short of dangerous.

One of the hardest things for serious advocates of mitigating global warming to do is to resist the tempatation to back medicore legislation or to cheer calls for inadequate measures.

The next denier tactic will be to embrace minimums and half-measures because they realize they are ruining their credibility with outright denial. Minimalist goals like these will feed their arguements. Moreover, the poltical dynamic is such that we’ll get one shot at getting this stuff right, and then it’ll go on hold for a decade or so.

If our target is 50%, we will hit feedbacks that will result in runaway global warming. The next two decades are critical — real cuts have to start now. We’re already seeing increases in atmospheric methane, which could be the bow wave of arctic methane gasing off.

The only conceivable glide path to peaking at 450ppm requires us to cut GHG by 80% against 2000 levels by 2050 (while crossing our fingers that we don’t trigger a positive feedback in the meantime).

Calling for anything short of that isn’t good news. It’s future fodder for deniers.

Dennis, it is much easier to come up with a reasonable-sounding misleading argument than it is to refute it in a way that is both reasonable sounding and actually correct.

Well, strictly speaking, replace “correct” with “consistent with current evidence”.

There, did you see how I had to back down to a slightly weaker but much wordier position? Just then?

Refuting misleading statements is something many climate scientists try to do, but we do it in our spare time and without any real training in polemics, and with a much stronger constraint than the various fringe cases on the denial side have to work with.

I just presented rock-solid, bullet-proof empirical evidence that GHG’s do not presently contibuted to any global warming. Moreover, all temp records should be analyzed by Anfrew M.’s method.

[JR: Yes, you have singlehandedly debunked the work of all the leading climate scientists in the world in hundreds of studies and real-world observation over decades — NOT! Please take such nonsense elsewhere.]